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A heated council meeting that had Brampton Mayor Susan Fennell and a councillor shouting “You’re a waste of money!” at each other ended with a definitive decision: An investigation will go forward into hundreds of city contracts given to a close friend of Fennell.

“Even if the internal audit finds there was no wrongdoing, the optics of giving 453 contracts to someone who lives in the mayor’s house look really bad,” Councillor Elaine Moore said Wednesday, after council affirmed last week’s committee decision to seek an audit.

At the council meeting, Fennell never addressed the issue of the contracts, worth more than $1.1 million, that have gone since 2001 to Meri-Mac, an event planning company owned by her close friend, Scott Ching, who lives in a house the mayor inherited from her father.

Ching has told the Star he received the work from the city because of outstanding value and service.

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“What raises a red flag is the fact that only one of the 453 contracts was examined by the media, and in that one case the city’s rules were not followed,” Moore said Wednesday.

A recent Star investigation revealed the work Ching’s company got from the city. It examined closely just one job, a bill for $4,725 to stage a mayor’s luncheon in 2010, which happened to be paid on a city credit card issued to one of the mayor’s staff.

The Star was later told that files for the other contracts were temporarily unavailable.

Instead of going through the finance department to pay for the luncheon, Fennell’s chief of staff, Ian Newman, authorized the hiring of Meri-Mac. Newman did not respond to questions about the charge, which appears to have exceeded the amount allowed for credit card payments.

The single $4,725 charge was split into two invoices, according to the city’s treasurer, Peter Honeyborne. He said last week that one of the invoices was for $2,200, meaning that the other was for $2,525 — which violates purchasing rules at the time that said any contracts over $2,500 had to go through the finance department.

“Last week our internal auditor told council that there have been contracts (in general) that are not compliant with our rules,” Moore said. “We need to know if there are patterns. Maybe only the one Meri-Mac contract had issues. We’ll find out. We need to lift the dark cloud hanging over city hall.”

Fennell did not respond to repeated questions from the Star about her connections with Ching, but after the Star published its report on the contracts, she acknowledged to other media that Ching is a good friend and lives in the house she owns.

The city’s investigation into the contracts will start after the internal auditor gets the needed documents.

Debate grew heated when discussion turned to the subject of another recent Star investigation: Fennell’s use of city staff during business hours to work on her private fundraisers, a gala and golf tournament.

Councillor John Sprovieri and others are working on replacing the city’s current integrity commissioner so a new one can be brought in to investigate the use of city resources.

He called the current system a waste of money, prompting the mayor to yell at him: “You know, councillor, you’re a waste of money.”

He responded in kind, yelling back: “You’re the biggest waste of money,” and holding up several documents, saying, “I have the proof.”

Sprovieri has been the most vocal of Fennell's council critics since the Star revealed a pattern of lavish spending by the mayor and her staff.

Documents obtained by the Star also contradict Fennell’s statements to the current integrity commissioner, Donald Cameron, who advised the mayor on her private fundraising efforts in 2011. She told him in 2011 she did not solicit for more than the cost of dinner tickets. Emails suggest she in fact solicited gala sponsors for as much as $100,000. Fennell didn’t address that discrepancy, or the use of staff time, on Wednesday.

Council decided to hold off voting on the issue of expediting a change of commissioner for two weeks, so staff can make suggestions on a process.

If a new commissioner is hired, the result would be a total of three investigations called by council related to Fennell: an ongoing external forensic audit of her spending, the internal audit of contracts to her friend, and an integrity commissioner’s probe of her use of taxpayer dollars for her private gala.

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